Are you a Real Football Player?
There are kids who love football and will never quit no matter how tough the practice or how tough the coaches are at demanding they work harder.
There are kids who like football and start out well, but eventually drop out and quit.
Then there are kids who pretend to be football players. Our coach used to tell us this story every year at the beginning of the season. The coaches noticed that one player never seemed to get through the Oklahoma drill very much or at all during practice. So the next time they ran the tackling drill they watched this particular kid to see what he was doing. The player was allowing other guys to go ahead of him in the drill and staying towards the back of the line. He also was counting kids in the other line to make sure when he went through the drill that he was against a guy who was younger and smaller than himself.
Just like Christians in Jesus day and even today, some Christians will never give up and quit. Ten of the Apostles died grisly deaths of beatings, crucifixions, beheadings etc. People today, around the world are still being martyred and dying in the name of Jesus.
When the going starts to get tough today in the church or outside the church some Christians walk away from the faith. Persecuted or made fun of for being a Christian at work, school or home some will simply walk away and leave the faith.
And today, we still have those who are like Judas in our midst at church. Those who pretend to be followers of Christ, they still go to church for whatever reason, but they are not Christians.
How about you? What type of football player and what type of Christian are you?
Vision
The best high school football teams have a vision of their future season. They don’t just set goals. Look up vision in your dictionary. There are several definitions, but I like this one, “The ability to think about or plan the future with imagination or wisdom.”
Football players that have vision give lots of their time, during the off season, to lifting weights, to speed and agility drills, to studying the playbook, throwing and catching the football, etc. That vision motivates them.
The actual football season is very short. Most high school football players will be done playing football their senior year. The season of football in their lives is over quickly.
Life in general is very short also. Most men and women will live into their seventies. A teenager thinks seventy years of age is an eternity away. But the time will fly by just as quickly as your high school football career does. Do you have a vision for your life?
The founders of this country had a vision as they stepped on those small sailing ships in Europe. The people who left the confines of the east coast of this country and headed west had a vision. The individuals in this country today that start new businesses and want to provide a better life for their family have a vision.
Do you have a vision for the spirituality of your family’s future?
Proverbs 29:18 Where there is no vision (no redemptive revelation of God), the people perish; but he who keeps the law (of God, which includes that of man)—blessed (happy, fortunate, and enviable) is he.
Our Father
The best thing about a high school football team is we have all kinds of people on that team. We are one team combined with all these different parts put together, pulling together in the same direction.
What is the most popular pregame or post-game prayer by most teams? My guess is the ‘Our Father’ or the ‘Lords Prayer’ is most likely the prayer most teams pray.
I want you to think about just the first two words of that prayer, ‘Our Father’. ‘Our’ means all of us, so when Jesus taught the disciples to pray he did not say, “My Father”, he said, “Our Father”. ‘Our Father’ means that he is the Father to all of us, Protestant, Catholic, rich, poor, Democrat, Republican, Independent, senior, freshman, black, brown, white, red, or yellow skinned, Christian or not-yet-a-Christian it includes us all.
What could we accomplish if all 2 billion Christians in this world acted like the local high school football team and pulled together as a team and tried to actually live this prayer?
Protestant version
Our Father, who art in heaven,
Hallowed be thy Name.
Thy Kingdom come.
Thy will be done on earth,
As it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our trespasses, (debts)
As we forgive those that trespass (debtor) against us.
And lead us not into temptation,
But deliver us from evil.
For thine is the kingdom,
and the power, and the glory,
For ever.
Amen.
Roman Catholic version
Our Father, who art in heaven,
Hallowed be thy Name.
Thy Kingdom come.
Thy will be done on earth,
As it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our trespasses,
As we forgive those that trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation,
But deliver us from evil.
Amen
Children
My wife, years ago wanted to go to some major play in Denver at some opera house or theatre. We took our three daughters and one of their girlfriends. So we had five girls on the trip counting my wife.
We went out to eat before the play in a fancy restaurant in downtown near the theatre. After we had ordered our meals my wife and all the girls left the table to go to the powder room.
Our waitress came over to the table immediately after the girls were out of sight and said, “What’s it like at your house with five women?” I answered, “Our male dog just recently died and our male cat runs around scared and hides a lot when the screaming, crying and yelling begins.” The waitress eyes were getting bigger by the minute as I talked to her. I then said, “We also see children as a blessing from God, just like the Bible says.”
Later that evening, I thought about the waitress and my exchange with her. The waitress was an early twenty something year old woman. Who knows what she was thinking about and why she asked me what it was like at our house? In the world today of abortions, transgender, homosexuality and contraceptives advertised in the media and families looked at strangely if they have more than two kids; maybe she just needed to hear that we saw children as a blessing from God.
An old farmer told me years ago that the best thing we raise in Kansas isn’t cattle or row crops, it is children and we all should have had a couple more!
Psalm 127: 3-5 Children are a gift from the LORD; they are a reward from him. Children born to a young man are like arrows in a warrior’s hands. How joyful is the man whose quiver is full of them!
Turn over the Table
My fraternity at K-State had a tradition of freshman taking upperclassmen by force, into the showers on their birthday. These attacks were done at anytime during the day or evening of that birthday and most everyone involved ended up soaking wet in their clothes.
One October evening at supper, the freshmen started to rush towards an upperclassman that I happened to be sitting next to, in one corner of the dining hall. There were only four of us at this round table that could hold six people. As the freshmen got close to where we were, I grabbed the edge of the table and threw it up in the air towards the freshmen. Everything on the table went flying towards the oncoming freshmen, food, utensils, drinks, bowls of food and our plates with food on them went flying. As the breakable plates and bowls hit the floor they shattered. Water and tea from our glasses and the pitchers went everywhere. The birthday boy then ran out a door that was behind us and I followed him, because I knew I was going to be in trouble.
The leaders of the fraternity, the president and the vice-president and all those types were angry at me. The freshmen, who were assigned clean up duty of the dining hall, were angry at me. The adults, who were our advisors, when they heard about it, were not only angry at me; they wanted me to pay for the broken dishes and wanted me out of the fraternity house.
Jesus turned over some tables at the place of worship one day. He made the powers that be angry at him. So angry in fact, for ruining their business deals, that it was one of the things that led to his death on the cross.
In my situation, when the leaders came to me and told me what might happen to me, I told them the freshmen should not have done this at supper. I told them the upperclassmen always fight being thrown in the shower and the table most likely would have been turned over by them anyway. After they thought about it, at our next meeting we passed a rule where the freshmen could not attack any upperclassmen in the dining hall, and I received a stern warning.
Matthew 21: 12-13 And Jesus went into the temple of God, and cast out all them that sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew the tables of the moneychangers, and the seats of them that sold doves. And said unto them, it is written, My house shall be called the house of prayer; but you have made it a den of thieves.
Sometimes we need to turn over the tables to start something new.
Offside Penalty
Several years ago I was broadcasting a girl’s basketball game on the radio. One of the girl’s names on our opponent’s team was familiar to me. I asked my broadcast partner, “You don’t suppose this is Ted’s daughter, that guy we used to play football against?”
I then asked my partner if he remembered this one particular play from that game thirty years before? My partner said he didn’t remember any particular play. So I said the two middle linebackers on that team were big guys. One was 6’1” and 235 and the other was 6’3” and 235. The bigger one kept trying to time the snap count and go between the guard and center gap on most every play.
On one particular play the linebacker went back about 7 or 8 yards to get a running head start to go along with his snap count guess. The quarterback realized what the linebacker was doing and didn’t give the final “hut” and just kept quiet. That big old linebacker just kept coming anyway and hit the center head on and with a forearm shiver stood the center straight up. He then pushed the center into the quarterback and wrapped both of them up in his arms. Then he drove them into the ground with the quarterback landing on his back, the center between them with the linebacker on top.
My broadcast partner starts laughing and said yes, he remembered that play. About 5 minutes later this big guy is standing in front of us as we are trying to call the ball game. He is yelling at me, “What are you saying about me on the radio?” I suddenly recognized him as I took off my headset and said, “Ted, I am Tim McGonagle.” Ted immediately smiles and says, “Hey man, how are you?” I asked my broadcast partner to take off his headset and give it to Ted and asked Ted to sit down and talk to me for a minute or two.
I quickly told him the story I just told on the air and he starts laughing. He said he remembered it just like I told it. I told him the next week at school when our coach showed us the film, he kept running the film back and forth, back and forth and we were all just laughing. Ted said the same thing happened at their school. So after a short visit we shook hands and he took off to finish watching his daughter play basketball.
At the end of your life, when you’re in that box, at your final party we call your funeral. You will only have three things left with you; your faith, your family and your friends. I pray that your life is abundant, with all three.
Growing Pains
It is called growing pains for a reason. As you grow as a child some have physical pain from growing so quickly. As you grow mentally and spiritually into an adult there are other growing pains to experience. The death of loved ones is a long lasting pain. The loss of a loved one in a romantic situation is another kind of pain. The experience of leaving home after high school may be painful.
Football practice is also a place to experience growing pains. Football practice at times is just plain uncomfortable. Weightlifting is of course a painful thing, the day after a heavy workout.
The idea of putting ourselves into painful situations in order to grow as a person is almost a lost concept today. We are all about the next pleasure and what’s in it for me and because of it; we are becoming a weak nation.
Who in our nation today experiences difficulty? The immigrant, the poor, the disadvantaged, those who join the military, small acreage farmers and ranchers and dare I say, those high school kids who go out for football. These are people that have been raised or exposed to harsh conditions and taught that life is tough, sometimes not fair and the strong survive.
As a Christian are you still growing? Do you ever feel uncomfortable? Do you ever feel the pain of growing? Do you go to church once a week in your comfortable environment and feel you have done your weekly duty after an hour? Where as a Christian should you feel the growing pain?
During repentance or confession, when you truly humble yourself and ask to be forgiven, you should feel weakness that turns into strength. That weakness to strength thing is a growing pain.
Daily prayer is painful at times, because you should do it in the quiet times of life. That will be before everyone gets up or after everyone goes to bed in your house. It is painful to miss out on sleep.
Bible reading of course is on our list. Many people have told me how difficult the Bible is to read. To big a book, to long a book, to boring, don’t have time to read, don’t like to read and all those excuses sound so painful, like growing pains that you don’t want any part of.
Do you ever fast from food? Spiritual fasting involves turning away from evil and turning back to God, but the lack of food can be difficult on the body. John Wesley was very famous for fasting. His main fast was from sundown on Thursday night until Friday at 3:00 p.m. Try that just one day next week. My guess is you will feel some pain on Friday.
I challenge you to continue to grow this next week and may it be painful.
2 Corinthians 12:10 Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in needs, in persecutions, in distresses, for Christ’s sake. For when I am weak, then I am strong.
In the Name of Love
Happy Birthday to Martin Luther King, Jr.
One man come in the name of love
One man come and go
One man come he to justify
One man to overthrow
In the name of love
What more in the name of love
In the name of love
What more in the name of love
One man caught on a barbed wire fence
One man he resist
One man washed up on an empty beach
One man betrayed with a kiss
In the name of love
What more in the name of love
In the name of love
What more in the name of love
Early morning, April four
Shot rings out in the Memphis sky
Free at last, they took your life
They could not take your pride
In the name of love
What more in the name of love
In the name of love
What more in the name of love
In the name of love
What more in the name of love
In the name of love
What more in the name of love
John 15:18 If the world hates you, know that it hated Me before it hated you.
The Goal
The main goal of the game of football is to score touchdowns and win the game. Over the past 100 years, how we arrive at the end zone has changed many times. Different schemes, plays, ideas and the game changes every year, but the main goal is to score touchdowns.
The main goal of life is holiness on this earth now, while we live our lives. What is holiness? Some think to be holy you have to be the preacher or the priest. Some think we must give up all the fun things we do.
Holiness is surrendering to the will of God. Therefore, it is knowing right from wrong and saying yes to God in all areas of our lives. When you see holiness in someone else you recognize it and you want to be around them.
For me in my life, two of the men who inspired me to be a Christian, were a couple of my high school football coaches. They both were very straight forward tough men, but they also helped lead our Fellowship of Christian Athletes organization. You would also find them in church every Sunday morning. They led us by the example of how they lived their lives.
I have also been fortunate to be around other holy men, over the course of my life, a Methodist preacher, two Catholic priests and an Episcopal priest, that have encouraged me to seek and serve God.
Let us remember that holiness is something God does to us while we are doing the will of God. Just like the game of football that continues to change, so our lives also change. We grow and we think differently, but holiness is still the goal.
2 Timothy 1:9 He has saved us and called us to a holy life–not because of anything we have done but because of his own purpose and grace. This grace was given us in Christ Jesus before the beginning of time.